The human eye is capable of adapting to displayed information with precision over a range of 14 orders of magnitude in luminance, from bright day to starlight. Typically, visual displays (hereinafter, “screens”) used in theaters, simulation and training, or the like offer a range less than 4 orders of magnitude, and their peak luminance is a tiny fraction of that of the real-world scenes being displayed or simulated.
Typically, for existing screens visual details intended to represent part of a daytime visual scene are actually rendered at luminance levels only encountered at night in the real world. The eye responds very differently at different luminance levels. In simulation and training scenarios, training fidelity may suffer when screen luminance is inappropriate for the training scenario. This lack of fidelity to real-world conditions limits the transference of training that can be achieved in a simulator and, therefore, the number of training tasks that can be performed in-simulator.
HDR has come into wide use for home entertainment and theatrical content generation. Demanding standards have been developed for capture, distribution and display of imagery that spans nearly the entire range of human visual sensitivity. Digital encoding and decoding of such HDR imagery typically requires from 10 to 12 bits, or two to four more bits than the 8 bits which were standard for video and computer graphics for many years. The home TV industry has been very successful adding this additional precision while maintaining affordability by adopting new technologies such as quantum dots, organic light emitting diodes and spatially modulated back lighting which can be easily adapted to the small format sizes common in consumer television. HDR TVs are now available in sizes up to 84 inches (diagonal). Digital cinema on the other hand has struggled to come up with an affordable method to display HDR on large screens because of the high brightness and high contrast involved. Digital Cinema projectors with laser light sources and dual modulation have been developed but have not been well accepted because of cost. There are currently no displays in between these extremes that the simulation and training industry could adopt where large screen display is required.
Other drawbacks, inconveniences, and issues for current systems and methods al so exist.